Orson Card - Pastwatch - The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus

"He will not be on your side until you have asked these people to forgive you for thinking that they were savages." She turned her back on him and went back into her house.

Outside, she could hear the Spaniards shouting at each other for a few moments. Some of them wanted to seize her and put her to death on the spot. But Cristoforo knew better. Angry as he was, he knew that she had seen things that only God and he had known.

Besides, the Spanish were outnumbered. Cristoforo was nothing if not prudent. You don't commit to battle until you know that you'll win -- that was his philosophy.

When they were gone, Diko emerged again from her house. Nugkui was livid. "How dare you make these white men so angry? Now they'll be friends with Guacanagari and never visit us again!"

"You don't want them as friends until they learn how to be human," said Diko. "Guacanagari will beg for them to be friends with someone else before this story is played out. But I tell you this. No matter what happens, let it be known that no harm is to come to the one they call Colўn, the white-haired one, the cacique. Tell it to every village and clan: If you harm Colўn, the curse of Sees-in-the-Dark will come upon you."

Nugkui glowered.

"Don't worry, Nugkui," she said. "I think Colўn will be back."

"Maybe I don't want him back," Nugkui retorted. "Maybe I just wish you and he both would go away!" But he knew the rest of the village wouldn't stand for it if she left. So she said nothing, until he turned and walked out into the forest. Only then did she return to her house, where she sat on her sleeping mat and trembled. Wasn't this exactly what she had planned? To make Cristoforo angry but plant the seeds of transformation in his mind? Yet in all her imagining of this encounter, she had never counted on how powerful Cristoforo was in person. She had watched him, had seen the power he had over people, but he had never looked her in the eye until this day. And it left her as disturbed as any of the Europeans who had confronted him. It gave her new respect for those who resisted him, and new understanding of those who bent completely to his will. Not even Tagiri had so much fire burning behind her eyes as this man had. No wonder the Interveners chose him as their tool. Come what may, Cristoforo would prevail, given time enough.

How had she ever imagined that she could tame this man and bend him to her own plan?

No, she said silently, no, I'm not trying to tame him. I'm only trying to show him a better, truer way to fulfill his own dream. When he understands that, those eyes win look at me with kindness, not with fury.

It was a long trip down the mountain, not least because some of the men seem disposed to take out their anger on the girl, Chipa. Cristoforo was caught up in his own thoughts when he became aware that Pedro was doing his best to shield the girl from the shoving and curses of Arana and Gutierrez. "Leave her alone," Cristoforo said.

Pedro looked at him with gratitude, and the girl, too.

"She's not a slave," said Cristoforo. "Nor is she a soldier. She helps us of her own free will, so that we'll teach her about Christ."

"She's a heathen witch, just like that other one!" retorted Arana.

"You forget yourself," said Cristoforo.

Sullenly Arana bowed his head in acknowledgment of Cristoforo's superior rank.

"If Pinzўn doesn't return, we'll need the help of the natives to build another ship. Without this girl, we'd be back to trying to talk to them with signs and grunts and gestures."

"Your page is learning their babble," said Arana.

"My page has learned a few dozen words," said Cristoforo.

"If anything happened to the girl," said Arana, "we could always come back up here and take that black whore and make her interpret for us."

Chipa spoke up in fury. "She would never obey you."

Arana laughed. "Oh, by the time we were through with her, she'd obey, all right!" His laugh got darker, uglier. "And it'd be good for her, too, to learn her place in the world."

Cristoforo heard Arana's words and they made him uncomfortable. A part of him agreed completely with Arana's sentiments. But another part of him couldn't help but remember what Sees-in-the-Dark had said. Until he saw the natives as equals ...

The thought made him shudder. These savages, his equals? If God meant them to be his equals, he would have let them be born as Christians. Yet there was no denying that Chipa was as smart and good-hearted as any Christian girl. She wanted to be taught the word of Christ, and to be baptized.

Teach her, baptize her, put her in a fine gown, and she would still be brown-skinned and ugly. Might as well put a monkey in a dress. Sees-in-the-Dark was denying nature, to think it could be otherwise. Obviously she was the devil's last-ditch effort to stop him, to distract him from his mission. Just as the devil had led Pinzўn to sail the Pinta away.

It was near dark when he returned to the half-completed stockade where the Spanish were encamped. He could hear the sound of laughter and revelry in the camp, and was prepared to be angry about the lack of discipline, until he realized why. There, standing beside a large fire, regaling the gathered seamen with some tale or other, was Martin Alonzo Pinzўn. He had come back.

As Cristoforo strode across the open area between the gate of the stockade and the fire, the men around Pinzўn became aware of him, and fell silent, watching. Pinzўn, too, watched Cristoforo's approach. When he was near enough for them to speak without shouting, Pinzўn began his excuses.

"Captain-General, you can't imagine my dismay when I lost you in the fog coming away from Colba."

Such a lie, thought Cristoforo. The Pinta still was clearly visible after the coastal fog dissipated.

"But I thought, why not explore while we're separated? We stopped at the island of Babeque, where the Colbanos said we'd find gold, but there wasn't a bit of it there. But east of here, along the coast of this island, there were vast quantities of it. For a little strip of ribbon they gave me gold pieces the size of two fingers, and sometimes as large as my hand!"

He held up his large, strong, callused hand.

Cristoforo still did not answer, though now he stood not five feet from the captain of the Pinta. It was Segovia who said, "Of course you will give a full accounting of all this gold and add it to the common treasury."

Pinzўn turned red. "What do you accuse me of, Segovia?" he demanded.

He might accuse you of treason, thought Cristoforo. Certainly of mutiny. Why did you turn back? Because you couldn't make any better headway against the east wind than I did? Or because you realized that when you returned to Spain without me, there would be questions that you couldn't answer? So not only are you disloyal and untrustworthy, but you are also too cowardly even to complete your betrayal.

All of this remained unsaid, however. Cristoforo's rage against Pinzўn, though it was every bit as justified as his anger toward Sees-in-the-Dark, had nothing to do with the reason God had sent him here. The royal officials might share Cristoforo's contempt for Pinzўn, but the seamen all looked at him as if he were Charlemagne or El Cid. If Cristoforo made an enemy of him, he would lose his control over the crew. Segovia and Arana and Gutierrez didn't understand this. They believed that authority came from the King. But Cristoforo knew that authority came from obedience. In this place, among these men, Pinzўn commanded much more obedience than the King. So Cristoforo would swallow his anger so that he could make use of Pinzўn in accomplishing God's work.

"He accuses you of nothing," said Cristoforo. "How can anyone think of accusing you? The one who was lost is now found. If we had a fatted calf, I'd have it slaughtered now in your honor. In the name of Their Majesties, I welcome you back, Captain Pinzўn."